Sunday, February 27, 2011

Just in case you missed it--The Lost Thing won the Academy Award for best short animated film and one of the award recipients said, on the air, "Minä rakastan sinua". And yes, he wasn't a Finn. A Finn wouldn't say that on the air!

P.S. I wasn't the only viewer to notice the Finnish romance. Here is a link to YLE's English news service.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

I try to listen and read along with Selkouutiset each day and my new vocabulary started in Tunisia, spread to Egypt, and now is describing events in Libya.

Eroaa ---- leave

Väkilvalta ----- violence

Mielenosoittajia ---- demonstrators

I would never be able to remember these words if I were confronted with a vocabulary list, but seeing them night after night has driven the words home. I am following the struggle for democracy in these countries as well as in Wisconsin and down the hill in the State House.

I spent a summer in Carthage and have always wanted to return. My interest in Tunisia was sparked by Flaubert and also by Queen Dido and her unrequited love. She covered a lot of ground with her ox-hide. (If you are interested in the math that enabled Queen Dido to cover the entire Byrsa, read here. I took the top picture from this site).

But the reality of Tunisia was better than the books. It is a scenic land littered with Roman ruins. And before the Romans were the Phoenicians. The Phoenician spirit seems to survive today in Tunisia. I took heart from this quote from the New York Times that Tunisia will not go the way of Iran:

Mounir Troudi, a jazz musician, disagrees. He has no love for the former Ben Ali government, but said he believed that Tunisia would remain a land of beer and bikinis.

“This is a maritime country,” Mr. Troudi said. “We are sailors, and we’ve always been open to the outside world. I have confidence in the Tunisian people. It’s not a country of fanatics.”

Here is a rap video by some very young Finns. According to the comments on boingboing Ella and Aleksi were four years old when they started rapping in Finnish. I love this animation-especially the fox. The video answers whatever questions you have about flushing the toilet on a train.

While exciting demonstrations ripple through Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and even Algeria, a masked band of food activists is striking out against a large American corporation - the sacred Golden Arches.

Above is a picture from the Daily Mail of Jani Leinonen, spokesman for the Food Liberation Army. You can listen to an interview with Mr. Leinonen here on NPR. Mr. Leinonen comes across as quite charming with a subversive sense of humor. Can you imagine a member of ELF admitting that they love McDonald's food. Mr. Leinonen even ate at McDonald's the day after the kidnapping.

The police stormed his home and arrested Mr. Leinonen and he admits that he, "sung like a bird" during the police interrogation.

You can watch Mr. Leinonen's demands of McDonald's on the YouTube video below. I wonder what it would take to get some answers to these questions. If you wonder why the translation spells hamburger as hampurger then you should know the Finnish word for hamburger is hampurilainen. I wonder if this art performance piece will land Mr. Leinonen on the United States no fly list. Like Mickey d's, the US has a notoriously thin skin where any performance can be deemed to be "terrorism". Remember the Aqua Team Hunger Force campaign in Boston?